group in the usual sequence: Ahmed led, with Rafiq just behind him. Twenty feet behind them were Farzad and Hopeless. After another twenty feet, Haqqani and I brought up the rear.
With the sun down, I had lost my sense of direction, but there was no hesitation on the part of our captors. We moved steadily, even urgently, toward what was to me an unknown destination.
It’s interesting how the mind works when it is calm. Even in dire circumstances, once you’ve resolved that you don’t need to be anxious about what’s happening—in other words, once you’ve shut downfight-or-flight responses—the parasympathetic nervous system kicks in so your body can relax and conserve energy.
Strangely, perhaps, this was happening to me. I was pleased to notice that despite the continuous walking up and down hills and the presence of a gunman at my back, my heart was not beating at a rapid pace. For the moment, I had accepted that there was nothing I could do about the situation. It had become a routine. I wasn’t consciously thinking about the danger. Even in the dark my focus was simply on placing one foot where the other foot had just been and repeating the process.
It was about an hour after my brief speech that I was startled by movement on our left. I was amazed to see it was a boy, about seven years old, forty feet away and on an intersecting course with our path. The moonlight revealed a slim youth with unruly dark hair, covered with dust. He carried three or four loaves of freshly baked naan and a kettle of water.
Where had he come from? Was it a coincidence, or had he been told to be in this exact spot at this exact time?
When the boy was close, Hopeless spoke to him. Without a word the boy handed over his load and quickly disappeared. It angered me that the Taliban had so much control over this child and his life. Yet it was an all-too-common story.
The father of the Taliban movement was a veteran of the mujahideen war against the Soviet Union, a Pashtun and Muslim fundamentalist named Mohammed Omar. In 1994, following the withdrawal of Soviet troops after its failed occupation, Afghanistan had descended into lawlessness and civil war. One day Omar was stopped and robbed by armed bandits at five roadblocks on a twenty-five-mile road between his village and Kandahar, the country’s second-largest city.
Omar was outraged. He organized a Jirga , or tribal council, of more than fifty area religious leaders. These men formed a militia with the goal of eliminating one checkpoint. When their lightly armed party chased off the bandits without a shot being fired, they advanced to the next checkpoint. Within a week all the roadblocks between Omar’s village and Kandahar had been cleared. Omar used the Pashto word for “students of Islam” to name his group: Taliban .
Soon after, Omar reportedly led thirty men armed with sixteen rifles to free two teenage girls who had been kidnapped and raped by a warlord, hanging the local commander from the barrel of a tank gun. More incidents like these led to support from a population weary of chaos and random violence.
Then Omar claimed to have had a dream telling him that Allah had chosen him to bring peace to Afghanistan. He found a ready supply of recruits for his new movement in madrassas—Islamic religious schools. When millions of Afghans fled their homes during the war against the Soviet Union, many ended up in refugee camps along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. The young students here were taught a particularly austere and rigid form of Islam. They faced monotony and filth daily, with little promise for change. By comparison, Omar and the Taliban appeared to offer a life of excitement, hope, and meaning.
If the boy I’d just seen and others like him joined the Taliban, however, what hope did they really have? The Taliban may have brought order to Afghanistan, but their strict interpretation of Sharia law, brutal treatment of women, and dependence on violence to achieve
With the sun down, I had lost my sense of direction, but there was no hesitation on the part of our captors. We moved steadily, even urgently, toward what was to me an unknown destination.
It’s interesting how the mind works when it is calm. Even in dire circumstances, once you’ve resolved that you don’t need to be anxious about what’s happening—in other words, once you’ve shut downfight-or-flight responses—the parasympathetic nervous system kicks in so your body can relax and conserve energy.
Strangely, perhaps, this was happening to me. I was pleased to notice that despite the continuous walking up and down hills and the presence of a gunman at my back, my heart was not beating at a rapid pace. For the moment, I had accepted that there was nothing I could do about the situation. It had become a routine. I wasn’t consciously thinking about the danger. Even in the dark my focus was simply on placing one foot where the other foot had just been and repeating the process.
It was about an hour after my brief speech that I was startled by movement on our left. I was amazed to see it was a boy, about seven years old, forty feet away and on an intersecting course with our path. The moonlight revealed a slim youth with unruly dark hair, covered with dust. He carried three or four loaves of freshly baked naan and a kettle of water.
Where had he come from? Was it a coincidence, or had he been told to be in this exact spot at this exact time?
When the boy was close, Hopeless spoke to him. Without a word the boy handed over his load and quickly disappeared. It angered me that the Taliban had so much control over this child and his life. Yet it was an all-too-common story.
The father of the Taliban movement was a veteran of the mujahideen war against the Soviet Union, a Pashtun and Muslim fundamentalist named Mohammed Omar. In 1994, following the withdrawal of Soviet troops after its failed occupation, Afghanistan had descended into lawlessness and civil war. One day Omar was stopped and robbed by armed bandits at five roadblocks on a twenty-five-mile road between his village and Kandahar, the country’s second-largest city.
Omar was outraged. He organized a Jirga , or tribal council, of more than fifty area religious leaders. These men formed a militia with the goal of eliminating one checkpoint. When their lightly armed party chased off the bandits without a shot being fired, they advanced to the next checkpoint. Within a week all the roadblocks between Omar’s village and Kandahar had been cleared. Omar used the Pashto word for “students of Islam” to name his group: Taliban .
Soon after, Omar reportedly led thirty men armed with sixteen rifles to free two teenage girls who had been kidnapped and raped by a warlord, hanging the local commander from the barrel of a tank gun. More incidents like these led to support from a population weary of chaos and random violence.
Then Omar claimed to have had a dream telling him that Allah had chosen him to bring peace to Afghanistan. He found a ready supply of recruits for his new movement in madrassas—Islamic religious schools. When millions of Afghans fled their homes during the war against the Soviet Union, many ended up in refugee camps along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. The young students here were taught a particularly austere and rigid form of Islam. They faced monotony and filth daily, with little promise for change. By comparison, Omar and the Taliban appeared to offer a life of excitement, hope, and meaning.
If the boy I’d just seen and others like him joined the Taliban, however, what hope did they really have? The Taliban may have brought order to Afghanistan, but their strict interpretation of Sharia law, brutal treatment of women, and dependence on violence to achieve
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